


The Art of Walking Backwards

by fishoutofcamelot



Series: Fishoutofcamelot's Amazing Fic Giveaway [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur dies and wakes up in the past, Eavesdropping, Episode: s03e12-13 The Coming of Arthur, Episode: s05e13 The Diamond of the Day, Fic Giveaway, Gen, Post-Battle of Camlann, Post-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, between 1-10k words, if i wrote this story to completion it would have hit like 50k lmao, this is supposed to be a oneshot, this was gonna be way longer but i had to cut myself off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22998109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishoutofcamelot/pseuds/fishoutofcamelot
Summary: Arthur closes his eyes, ready to die...only to wake up in an abandoned castle, a week after Morgana's betrayal, six years in the past.
Relationships: Knights of the Round Table & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Lancelot & Merlin (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Fishoutofcamelot's Amazing Fic Giveaway [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579372
Comments: 24
Kudos: 494





	The Art of Walking Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, finally writing another fic as prompted in my fic giveaway on Tumblr @fishoutofcamelot! This one was requested by @eletricclown! Thanks for the ask, my friend :)   
> They requested a time travel fic, preferably with Arthur calling out Uther. I got one out of two of your desires! My original plan did have Uther getting called out/roasted by his son, but these giveaway fics are supposed to max out at 10k words and I didn't have time to get to that part. Hope this is still okay!

If Arthur had a gold coin for every time Merlin cried, he’d have enough money to fill the vaults of Camelot twice over. Unicorns, pretty sunrises, powerful war ballads - you name it, he’s probably cried about it. 

The most memorable instance of this has to be the time Arthur stepped on a worm while on patrol, and Merlin got so upset that he held their dinners ransom until everyone agreed to hold a funeral for it. Gwaine, naturally, played along - but to the surprise of everyone, it was  _ Leon _ who gave the eulogy. 

(And Gaius says an idiot like that is the most powerful sorcerer to ever live? Hilarious.)

So it’s no surprise that Merlin is sobbing over Arthur’s dying corpse. What bothers him is the fact that  _ Arthur _ is the reason he’s crying so heavily. 

He has so many things he wishes to say, begs to say to Merlin. Please don’t cry, I don’t want this to be the last thing I see of you. Please smile for me, please forgive me, please love - 

But he says “ _ Thank you _ ,” and he wishes he could stuff the words back down his throat the moment they come out. 

And he tries to say something more, tries to retract his statement and replace it with literally anything else. But it’s too late. His mouth won’t move, his vision is too blurry to see Merlin’s face, and soon even the world’s hazy outlines are too dark to make out. 

The last thing he knows is the taste of blood swelling in his mouth, and then nothing more.

~oOo~

Arthur has never been one to contemplate death much. Well, what happens after, anyway. 

When he was little, he asked Uther what happened to his mother now that she was dead. He’d been scolded for such a thought, and told never to think about it again. So he didn’t, not until the dorocha, and then at his father’s death, and then at the incident with his father’s ghost.

Although, perhaps he should have given it more thought. Because here he is, dead, and with no clue of what to expect.

When he opens his eyes, he sees no angel choirs or pillars of fire. No, all he sees is a dimly lit castle wall. It’s old and dusty and looks close to crumbling apart, and a flame in the corner of his eye casts shadows against it. 

Is this it? This is the afterlife? Staring at a wall for the rest of time? How  _ pleasant. _

To be fair, though, this is probably to be expected. Since magic is apparently not evil, then every sorcerer he’s executed was innocent. He’s killed countless innocent people for no crime but being the victims of Arthur’s own blind prejudice. It makes sense that he’d be forced to spend all of eternity in an unpleasant stasis of wall-staring limbo.

_ “Why did you never tell me? _

_ “I wanted to, but…” _

_ “What?” _

_ “You’d have chopped my head off.” _

Even Merlin, his own friend, fears him. Well,  _ feared  _ him. There’s no use fearing a dead man. 

At least his death has achieved one thing, though. At least Merlin will be free now. Hopefully Gwen will do better by Camelot’s people than Arthur ever could. 

Perhaps it’s for the best that he died. Perhaps Mordred ought to be hailed a hero for felling a tyrant.

When Arthur looks at his shadow, all he sees is his father.

A familiar voice snaps him out of his reverie. “Are you going to stand there and stare at the wall all night, Arthur?” 

He pivots on his heels to face the one who’d spoken, heart aching in recognition. It can’t be…

As it turns out, Arthur is standing in a large, derelict chamber with cobwebbed chandeliers and a softly roaring fireplace. To his right is a dusty table, and a table-cover lays limp at his feet. Two figures laugh and chase each other along the far wall of the chamber, but the shadows are too numerous for him to discern their identities. 

Another five figures sit by the fireplace and talk cheerily to one another. And they all wear faces of people he once knew: Lancelot, Elyan, Leon, Gaius, and Gwen.

No. No, this can’t be possible. It  _ can’t  _ be! Lancelot and Elyan he can understand - they’re both dead like him. But Leon? Gaius?  _ Gwen _ ? 

His throat turns dry. When did they die? And how? 

A hideous voice in the back of his mind hisses that whatever happened, it’s probably his fault.

“Arthur?” asks the familiar voice again, and Arthur snaps his head into the direction of its speaker. And his heart shatters into a million tiny fragments, throbbing with a pain not even Mordred’s sword could cause.

There, standing before him, is Merlin. Bumbling, stupid, loyal,  _ magical  _ Merlin. With a jaunty blue scarf around his neck and a red shirt hanging off his unhealthily thin, sallow frame. Like he’s lost twenty pounds or so in the span of an hour. He must have, because the Merlin he knew had spent the last three years bulking up and finally putting some muscle on his bones (not to mention that this Merlin looks several years younger, too).

_ No _ . If there’s anyone he wants to see in the afterlife, Merlin’s at the bottom of the list. Because that means he’s  _ dead _ , and dead means -

The screaming of a dorocha as it tears through mortal flesh. Vacant, empty eyes frozen in anguish.  _ “Take me with you, please.” _

A lifeless body on the ground. Dead weight thrown over his shoulders. Merlin’s face contorted into a grimace as he tries and fails to hide his pain. A rockfall. 

If Merlin’s dead, then it means Arthur wasn’t there to protect him. It means Merlin suffered the same emptiness, the same agony, the same desperation that Arthur had gone through in his final moments. It means so many horrible, awful things that the mere  _ thought  _ gives him the impulse to hurl.

By now, Merlin is snapping his fingers in Arthur’s face. “Earth to dollophead. You still in there?”

Arthur blinks a few times, and tries to regain his composure. He fails. “Merlin,’ he hisses. “What the  _ hell  _ is going on here?”

Merlin just rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Oh come now, Arthur. Even someone as uptight as you should know what a celebration looks like.” A cheeky shrug. “Well, I suppose that just means you’re thick in more ways than one.”

“Celebration? What is there to -”

Wait.

The castle. Merlin’s appearance. The presence of living and dead people in the same space. The Round Table just a few paces to his side.

He’s in the Castle of Ancient Kings. And it’s the night the Round Table was formed.  _ Six years in the past _ .

Merlin’s smile softens. “You just knighted four commoners, Arthur. Whether or not we live through this, that’s something to commemorate. Isn’t it?” Then, even softer, “I’m proud of you, sire.”

“What do you mean I - I -” He clears his throat. Evidently this Merlin - whether an illusion or a dream or something in between - doesn’t know anything about the past six years. “Right. Of course. Th...thank you, Merlin.”

The acknowledgement burns on his tongue, as though he’s somehow defiling his last words to Merlin. The real Merlin, that is.

Because there’s no way any of this is real. People talk about your life flashing before your eyes as you die, and maybe that’s what this is. Maybe Arthur’s reliving his greatest hits before passing on into the unknown. And in light of how ‘great’ his tyrannical legacy truly is, this will probably be over quick.

Well, there are certainly worse ways to die, and this is certainly better than he deserves.

Merlin’s face splits into a glowing smile. Then, spinning on his heels, he cups his hands around his mouth. “Oi! Arses of the Round Table!” Gwaine squawks in mock indignation. “Get over here!”

Everyone exchanges curious grins as they oblige him, and a faint memory niggles at the back of his mind. 

Right, he remembers this. Not long after the makeshift knighting ceremony, Merlin decided to hold a little get-to-know-you game where everyone sat in a circle sharing odd facts about themselves. Arthur hadn’t participated the first time around, too busy brooding by the nearest windowsill, but he’d overheard snippets. That must be what Merlin’s initiating now. 

As Merlin goes on to seat everyone back at the Round Table and explain the rules of the game - ask someone a question, they have to answer it, and then they get to choose who to ask next - Arthur finds a new resolve hardening within himself: if he’s going to be trapped inside a memory, he might as well make it a good one.

So Arthur sits down, eyes crinkling and wet with nostalgia, with uncertainty of how long these good moments will last, with remorse over knowing he doesn’t deserve this. He sits between Merlin and Gwen, and they both spare him surprised, affectionate grins. They clearly didn’t expect him to participate.

Merlin starts, and he asks Percival what his thoughts are on Gwaine’s hair. Percival answers truthfully, as that’s one of the rules, which causes Gwaine to launch him to the ground in an impromptu wrestling match.

Then Percival asks Leon about what it’s like being a knight, and Leon spends a good chunk of time waxing poetic about honour and responsibility - only to be cut off by Elyan tossing a lump of bread at him for being melodramatic. Elyan is the one Leon asks.

And thus it goes around the Table, endlessly, with everyone getting to know each other more and more. And while Arthur already knows these things about his knights - he knows more about them than they know about themselves, at this point - it’s nice to reminisce on the good old days. To pretend, for just a moment, that all is well with the world.

But then Elyan picks Gwen, and Gwen tells everyone about how she helped Leon escape from the dungeons - and then Gwen picks Arthur. And that’s when things start getting strange.

“Now answer me honestly, Arthur.” Her voice dances with mirth. “When you stayed at my house for those few days, how did you smuggle an entire mattress into my back room?”

Arthur splutters, and the entire Table devolves into uproarious, disbelieving laughter. Even Leon is chuckling at his king’s - well, prince’s - expense.

“When was this?” Elyan cries, bordering on protective outrage. “You and Gwen  _ slept _ together?”

Face quickly blossoming into a deep red, Gwen straightens her posture. “Elyan, get your mind out of the gutter! I wouldn’t - we didn’t - I - I -”

Arthur clears his throat. Sure, he’s been married to her for four years now, but their bedroom behaviours are none of his knights’ business. It’s not Merlin’s business either, but that doesn’t stop him from accidentally stumbling upon certain... _ vulnerable _ activities. On the plus side, at least Merlin gets too embarrassed to tease them about it.

“There was an assassin,” he says, a bit flustered himself. “So I made him think I had left Camelot while, instead, I remained in hiding to try and catch him.”

Leon’s brows furrow. “When was this?”

Meanwhile, Merlin’s doubling over into a rack of hearty guffaws. “Ha! More like you wanted to participate in a jousting tournament while being all sneaky about it, and stumbled into an assassin out of sheer bad luck.”

Eight pairs of eyes lock back on Arthur, no doubt expecting a response from him. Which he will  _ not  _ provide. He doesn’t owe any explanations to a group of  _ hallucinations _ , especially when he outranks them.

“Alright then, what about you,  _ Merlin _ ?” Luckily, no one notices his failure to answer Gwen’s question. “What’s...your most embarrassing childhood memory?”

Merlin snorts. “Easy. The time I climbed up a tree and got stuck up at the top for a whole afternoon. Like a cat.”

In that moment, two realizations occur to Arthur.

One: Merlin lies really,  _ really  _ easily. If Arthur didn’t have six extra years of experience in reading Merlin’s expressions, he might have believed Merlin’s little white lie without a second thought. Merlin opens up his posture a bit, leans back in his chair in an air of false nonchalance, and he always does that when he lies - tries to make it out as though he’s got nothing to hide. 

But why would Merlin lie about something as inconsequential as this? Perhaps the real memory has to do with magic, but that would mean he’s been practicing at an early age. Just how young was he when he became a sorcerer?

Now hang on a minute. How is this part of the conversation even happening at all? Arthur doesn’t know this about Merlin, so how could he be dreaming about it? 

Maybe his mind is filling in the gaps, coming up with random details as dreams are wont to do. But for some reason, that explanation feels a bit lacking to him.

And therein lies his second realization: the fact that this ‘dream’ of his feels far too real. The grainy wood of the Table under his palms. The crinkles and creases in Gaius’s weathered face. The tinny pitch of Gwen and Elyan’s laughs in chorus. The knobby, bony narrowness of Merlin’s hands back when he was this young and innocent. The taste of dust and grime in the air, blending in with the fireplace’s smoke before staining his nostrils. 

Is this...real? 

It can’t be. It can’t be real. How can such a thing be possible? That would mean he’s been transported six years into the past - or, more disturbingly, that the last six years were nothing more than an illusion.

Another round of laughter jolts him back into awareness. Gwaine is standing on the Table, dancing in merriment to the tune of the unrecognizable melody Merlin and Percival are harmonizing. The rest of the Table laughs and claps to the tempo, while Gaius just sits by and laughs.

This didn’t - this didn’t happen the first time around. This never happened. How…

Gwaine holds his hand out to Merlin, who accepts it without thought and starts dancing as well. Elyan picks up the lyrics where he left off.

_ “Dulaman na binne bui, dulaman Gaelach,”  _ they sing.  _ “Dulaman na farraige, b'fhearr a bhi in Eirinn!” _

“What on earth…”

Leaning in, Gwen delightedly whispers, “Apparently it’s a common song to sing at festivals in the villages bordering between Camelot and Essetir, where Merlin and Percival are both from.” She chuckles. “And Elyan’s a fast learner, where music is concerned.”

Any number of things, Arthur is willing to accept as part of a pre-mortem fever dream. But an entire peasant song-and-dance routine? His imagination isn’t anywhere near wild enough to conjure something like this.

Perhaps it’s a magic thing. Perhaps those ‘sidhe’ Merlin mentioned have healed Arthur, but now they’ve placed him in a false world of their own making.

The more Arthur tries to rationalize what’s happening, the less his excuses make sense. He’s grasping at straws, but refuses to let go of them.

Deep down, he knows this is real. But it can’t be.  _ It can’t be _ .

If this is really happening, then that means he’s somehow time-traveled. And that means the last six years of his life...what? Don’t exist? Don’t matter? What happens to time when you change it? 

When the song concludes, Gwaine and Merlin flop back into their seats in exhaustion. Arthur sees this as his cue to put an end to things. “Yes, well, that was a  _ riveting  _ performance and all, but now I believe it’s time to get some due rest. We have a busy day tomorrow.”

There are a few murmurs of dissent, as the dance seems to have thoroughly riled up the knights, but everyone except Merlin knows better than to cross the prince.

It takes about ten more minutes, but eventually everyone’s got their bedrolls and blankets out, scattered about on the cold castle floor and snoring away. Arthur strains to think of where he slept the first time around, and panics upon realizing he can’t recall. But surely something as minor as a sleeping position won’t change the timeline too drastically, right? 

Right?

Arthur lays on his back, staring at the chandelier above him. It’s thickly webbed in sinews of white thread, and a little black spider scurries down the shaft of the chain and into a part of the web where a fly has been caught. Not far from his feet, the fire blazes on, the only remaining source of light left in the chamber. All is silent, save the fire’s crackling and the occasional snore - and Arthur’s thoughts, of course, which are so loud he’s almost surprised he hasn’t woken anyone up.

Camlann. Mordred’s betrayal. Arthur’s injury. Merlin’s confession. The journey to Avalon. Morgana’s death.  _ Arthur’s  _ death.

And now this. Waking up six years in the past, as though none of his knights had died and as though nothing had ever gone so horribly, horribly wrong.

Is this destiny? Merlin had mentioned it before. 

Or - is it Merlin’s magic? Did Merlin do something to try and save Arthur’s life, but inadvertently pulled his soul backwards in time? 

“You’re a knight,” Merlin whispers. “At last.”

Arthur opens his eyes into tiny, indistinguishable slits to see what his servant is up to. Lancelot and Merlin are lying side by side, an unreadable yet meaningful glance passed between them. They were always like that, and the familiarity of it once more makes his heart ache. 

Really, seeing Lancelot alive and well has arisen all sorts of complicated emotions within him. But in Arthur’s defense, his and Gwen’s affair  _ was  _ a low blow. 

He knows he shouldn’t judge a man by crimes he’s yet to commit, but still. It’s hard to be discerning with matters of the heart.

Lancelot shrugs. “But for how long?”

“Who knows?”

Lancelot and Merlin fall into silence again, long enough for Arthur’s mind to wander back into introspection - into the whos, whens, and hows of what the  _ hell  _ is going on - before Lancelot speaks once more.

“What are you planning? And don’t even think about lying. I know you too well.

“It’s too difficult to explain,” Merlin says with a sigh.

“You can tell me.”

Arthur struggles to maintain his veneer of sleep, lest he scare them out of continuing their conversation. Distantly, he knows eavesdropping is wrong, but he’s dead, and he’s pretty sure that’s earned him the right to do whatever he wants. And even if it he isn’t dead, then he’s still the king - prince - and he can  _ still _ do whatever he wants.

Merlin rolls over onto his side to face Lancelot more closely, until even their breaths are mingling in the frosty midnight air. Voice far more hushed than Arthur thought human speech could be capable of, Merlin says, “Morgana has the Cup of Life. If I can find it and empty it of the blood within, then the army will be destroyed and Morgana will be powerless.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something? It’s guarded by an immortal army.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something? I have magic.”

What? Did Lancelot -  _ does  _ Lancelot know about Merlin’s magic? How? And why? Why would Merlin trust Lancelot before his own best friend?

_ “You would’ve chopped my head off,”  _ murmurs the voice of Future Merlin in his mind. 

Ah. That’s why. Merlin’s afraid of Arthur, but he’s not afraid of Lancelot. 

That hurts more than it should. It  _ should  _ hurt with all the pain of being harpooned with a tuning fork. The way it  _ does  _ hurt is like having a hangnail so gruesome it fillets off all your skin in scrappy, bloody strips until you’re nothing but a screaming, skinless sack of meat.

“It doesn’t make you immortal.”

“No,” Merlin concedes, and he slides onto his backside once more. 

Another silence lapses between them, enabling Arthur to reflect on everything he’s heard and realized.

One: Lancelot knows about Merlin’s magic.

Two: Merlin intends to destroy the immortal army on his own. Considering how events played out the first time around, he likely succeeded - or rather,  _ will  _ succeed.

Three: This is all very,  _ very  _ real.

“You know, Merlin,” says Lancelot. His voice is overflowing with reverence and adoration. The same way Gwen sounds when she’s talking about Arthur, and the same way Percival sounds when he’s talking about Gwaine. “You’re the one Arthur should knight. You’re the bravest of us all, and he doesn’t even know it.”

Arthur has to bite his cheek to keep himself from crying out that yes, yes, he knows all to well just how brave and noble and selfless and  _ loyal  _ Merlin is, he knows the pain and fear and suffering that Merlin has had to endure as Arthur’s servant, he knows what Merlin has done to help Arthur become king.

Except...Arthur doesn’t really know at all, does he? He can guess at a few things. Guess at Merlin’s involvement in various victories and defeats in the past. But he doesn’t  _ know.  _ And if Arthur can’t return to his own time, then Arthur will likely never know.

Of course, does Arthur  _ want  _ to return to his time? To a time where Elyan’s dead and Mordred’s a traitor and Merlin is a cynical shell of his former self? To a time so deeply marred with his own mistakes that the shame of it almost burns him through?

But what choice does he have? What does he have left for him here? A group of friends who don’t remember all the things they’ve done together, who will never know him as well as he knows them? To a time where Merlin is still thin and naive and  _ alone _ ? Could he bear to relive every mistake he’s made, only to make everything worse than they were the first time?

“He can’t,” says Merlin, and he sounds so impossibly sad, but accepting. Like he’s come to terms with the fact that he may forever be alone. He probably has. “Not yet. That’s why I need to find a way to get to the Cup without Arthur knowing.”

_ “You would’ve chopped my head off.” _

Merlin’s afraid of him. As Arthur once feared sorcerers, Merlin feared Arthur.  _ Fears  _ Arthur. 

Who’s the real monster here?

When Arthur was a child, he used to get berated for crying. It wasn’t beholden of a man - much less a king - to show weakness so openly, or so said his father. So he learned to master the art of crying in silence. 

It’s good to know he still has that skill.

Unaware of the former king’s crisis, Lancelot speaks as a true friend would. “Leave that to me.”

~oOo~

Luckily, Arthur’s sharp mind for strategy enables him to recall his old plans to reclaim Camelot. When Lancelot requests help navigating the castle to disarm the warning bell, Arthur allows Merlin to join him, all while knowing  _ exactly  _ what they’re doing. Betrayal burns in his chest, but he smothers it. Arthur betrayed Merlin too, by making him feel as though his own friend would have him killed. By contributing to the oppression that has suffocated Merlin for so long that he’s forgotten how to trust. 

Or perhaps...perhaps he never knew how to trust to begin with.

But he’ll have more time to ponder the heart-breaking implications of that later. For now, he needs to formulate a plan.

Step One: reclaim Camelot as he did the first time. This will involve playing along to the exact letter of the original timeline as closely as possible, which may be a problem because he’s not good at remembering finer details. Hopefully those details aren’t as important as he’s making them out to be, but you can never be too careful.

Step Two: once the dust has settled, ask Gaius about how time travel, the afterlife, and destiny work. See if he can find any answers about what’s going on. 

Step Three: corner Merlin about his magic and ensure the clotpole that he has no reason to be afraid of Arthur, that Arthur would sooner eat Excalibur whole than let harm touch him.

Step Four: wait to become king again and then legalize magic. Make Merlin his Court Sorcerer, against his own better judgment about how appallingly that idiot would behave in a court setting.

“Good luck out there,” says Merlin. He’s got one of those stupid, loving smiles on his face, staring at Arthur as though he could do no wrong. As though he could light Merlin’s pyre himself and Merlin would still say, ‘be safe’. 

Arthur turns away, unable to confront the probably unhealthy level of devotion Merlin has for him. 

“You as well, Merlin,” says Arthur.

Merlin laughs. “I’ve got the easy bit.” Even though they both know he doesn’t. “The warning bell is nothing compared to the cells.”

Arthur is tempted to say that he overheard him and Lancelot, that he knows full well just how stupid Merlin’s about to be. But he keeps his lips pressed into a grim line, forces himself to smile, and clasps Merlin on the shoulder. 

“I’ll see you soon, old friend.”

Merlin’s loyalty will never make sense to him - why would someone so deeply love the man responsible for their oppression? - and yet, Arthur finds himself appreciating it nonetheless.

And thus he leads his men into battle.

This time around, he’ll fix things. Magic will be free, Lancelot and Elyan won’t die, he’ll keep Mordred from betraying them - and if he’s lucky, he’ll even bring Morgana back to their side.

But above all, he’ll give Merlin a reason to trust him. 

He knows now that he was sent back in time for a reason: to fix his mistakes. And so he shall. 

**Author's Note:**

> To any of you who recognize what song Merlin and company were singing, congrats! You get an imaginary cookie.
> 
> I won't lie, I seriously considered making a full multi-chapter fic with this au. But I already have so many other wips on my plate - "Beanstalks (Or Lack Thereof)", "Yield in the Sheltering of Innocence", "Missing Number Nine", "Merlinteractive", and of course the rest of the lovely giveaway requests! - so I probably won't. I need to focus on my main projects at the moment.
> 
> But! If any of you feel so inspired as to continue this idea in your own writing, by all means go ahead!! Just credit me with the idea. I'd really love to see what someone else does with this. 
> 
> Until then, see you later and have a great day <3


End file.
